Coming Soon: Nerd Boner

Excited? Yeah, I'm excited about the Star Trek reboot. Let's say I'm cautiously optimistic. For every "Batman Begins" we get an "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull-Fuck." J.J. Abrams' oeuvre has never really done much for me. I thought his "Mission Impossible III" was just OK. Never really bought into "Lost" or "Alias." Maybe, someday I'll sit down with the DVD box sets and try a little harder. And according to this New York Times piece, Abrams has been given the liberty to deliver a radical and non-canonical Trek (to borrow a favorite phrase of the Trekker cognoscenti.)

Just checked out Abrams' IMDB page and was surprised he was credited with the script for "Armageddon" - a preposterous film I shamelessly admit I find quite entertaining - although I didn't see much evidence of quality film making.

And so help me Jesus H. Christ, but the new Enterprise bridge looks like an intergalactic Apple Store.

Gizmodo has an early look at the 'Trek' flick and points out Abrams' fondness for lens flares. Lens flares are sort of like the old blinking tag in HTML. Too easy and scorned by professionals. Lens flares are a much maligned design no-no, right up there with the Comic-Sans typeface. Me? I always liked lens flares. Maybe it's time for a revival. Then again, I'm pretty unprofessional. But I tend to agree with the design overlords about Comic-Sans.

Not so surprisingly Harry "Hairy" Knowles of Aint It Cool News has a fawning review. Oh Harry! Your magic-filled childhood must have been wonderful but I'm pretty sick of hearing about it.

Abrams "guest edited" a recent issue of WIRED that incorporated ciphers, codes and puzzles. I spent quite a few hours trying to figure out the secret messages within. Especially interesting is a snippet of an article in the back pages (continued from a non-existent page) about the Koabayashi Maru, a oft-cited "Trek" trope from "Wrath of Khan." The article is a bit rambling and incoherent but on closer examination, it's pretty obvious that it's some sort of coded message but damn if I could make heads or tails out of it. Cryptology is not my forte.

P.S. It looks like the blinking HTML tag still works. At least I can see it in Firefox. I thought it was "depreciated" and ghettoized a long time ago. Hooray for the old school blinking text! I'm rocking the HTML like a 1998 porno site.

The Feel Bad Movies of 2009

"Observe and Report" is quite an odd, disturbing flick. Like "Adventureland," it was heralded via a deceptive trailer that was tailored to a few broad comedy moments lifted from the Judd Apatow playbook. S.N.L. cast members, hipster music cues and wacky physical comedy hi-jinks abound.

The actual films are quite different animals.

"Adventureland" is a nice throwback to 80s teen movies but instead of the usual emo-centric homage to John Hughes (i.e. "Can't Hardly Wait") - "Adventureland" is a bit grimmer and comes across like a mopey Cameron Crowe work, a downcast descendant of "Say Anything."

The over-cooked critical consensus is that "Observe and Report" is a dark comedy take on the revenge, anger and alienation themes of "Taxi Driver." Director Jody Hill points more accurately to another Scorcese flick; "King of Comedy" as an apt inspiration. Whatever animal "Observe and Report" might be, it's not something you see everyday. My less hip taxonomy would position its strange, dark flavor closer to the much-maligned Belushi/Ackroyd vehicle "Neighbors." A comedy marketed to mainstream crowds, featuring bankable actors that runs a lot closer to the dark side than most studio films are allowed to go - especially comedies.

And the full-frontal, male nudity envelope keeps getting pushed *ahem* harder. Fingers are pointing in the direction of trailblazer Harvey Keitel and his drunken Johnny Ace wiener- ballet in (best-movie-ever-made) "Bad Lieutenant" the starting line of a path that leads to Harvey's swingin' medallion in "The Piano" to the sausage party of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" to the glowing blue tube steak of "The Watchmen" - brothers and sisters, we are now (firmly) in the golden age of swinging dicks.

Amen to that.

Make of that, what you will but I can't imagine what Sacha Baron Cohen is going to do penis-wise in his forthcoming "Bruno."

Billy Bob Thorton >= Douche Nozzle

This is a hot one! If you ever heard "Celebrities at their Worst" you know what to expect here. Billy Bob Thorton shows up at a Canadian radio station with band in tow, plugging his tour with Willie Nelson. Billy apparently takes umbrage at the interviewer's brief mention of his acting career. Awkwardness follows and hilarity ensues.

Thanks to the AvClub, who gave this a classic title:
"Billy Bob Thorton gets weird, dickish on Canadian radio."

Beatles Remasters + RockBand

The NY Times tells us that a newly remastered Beatles catalog will be hitting the shelves September 9, 2009. The set will be released variously as individual titles (based on the original canon U.K. issues.) and in seperate box sets of mono and stereo mixes.

Looks like they will be presented in those nifty paper sleeves that replicate old-fashioned LPs. These faux-LP packages are common with Japanese releases but for some reason, you dont see them elsewhere. That's a shame because these Chu-Bop throwbacks are a lot cooler than brittle CD enclosures - not to mention environmentally friendly for those who drink the Al Gore Kool-Aid. There will also be documentaries about the making of each album included on the CDs and compiled in a stand-alone DVD with the box sets.

And while I'm a fan of "RockBand", the forthcoming Beatles version (also September 9) never really piqued my interest until I saw this way cool CGI render of Abbey Road Studios:


Somebody needs to make this into an Unreal level.

"Bruno" Red Band Trailer!